(Editorial from Labour & Trade Union Review, October 2002, No. 119)
Invasion dressed up as inspection
At
the time of writing, the US and Britain are pressing to get UN Security Council
authorisation to make war on Iraq, war which this time will not end without
the regime in Baghdad being overthrown.
The original excuse for war—Iraq’s alleged possession of non-conventional weapons, and its refusal to allow UN inspectors access to seek out and destroy them—disappeared on 16 September when the Iraqi Government offered UN inspectors access into Iraq on the terms of the existing Security Council resolutions, and subsequently on 1 October agreed arrangements with the head of the UN weapons inspectorate, Hans Blix. At that point, the causus belli, as stated consistently by the British, was gone: there was nothing to stop UN inspectors being on the ground in Iraq in a matter of days. But the US Government had made it clear long before 16 September that it had no interest in weapons inspection, its aim being to overthrow the Iraqi regime.
The people in Whitehall who were clamouring for the immediate admission of inspectors to Iraq a few weeks earlier are now refusing to take “Yes” for an answer. They follow along behind the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, who declared that the US would take any measures necessary to stop inspectors going into Iraq. And having been called in by Powell, Blix has now accepted that he is a servant of the US and not the Security Council and called off inspections.
The excuse offered by Britain for preventing the inspections they were previously demanding is that there must be a “tougher” inspection regime, which demands that inspectors be allowed to go anywhere anytime, and which carries with it the threat of military force in the event of Iraq failing to allow such access.
UNSCOM successful
The unstated assumption here is that the old inspection regime failed to get the job done. In fact, the previous UNSCOM weapons inspectors were very successful, and would have completed their job long ago, had they been allowed to remain in Iraq and carry out inspections in the manner agreed with the Iraqi Government, in particular, for sites deemed “sensitive” by the Iraqi Government. These included the so-called “presidential sites”.
For reasons unknown, the head of the UN weapons inspectorate at the time, Richard Butler, refused to allow the agreed procedure to be applied to the Baa’th Party headquarters in Baghdad in December 1998, whereupon the inspectors were refused access. This was used by Clinton and Blair as an excuse to bomb Iraq beginning on 16 December. The Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives had voted its final impeachment article against Clinton on 13 December. The inspectors were withdrawn, without the permission of the Security Council, prior to the start of the bombing—and have not been back since. The bombing itself was not authorised by the Security Council.
Clinton and Blair are responsible for UNSCOM failing to complete its inspections in Iraq.
Logical course now
It goes without saying that if the disarmament of Iraq was the name of the game, and if this was an urgent necessity to prevent Iraq’s acquisition of even more weaponry (as was being said a few weeks ago), the logical course of action would have been to get the inspectors in as soon as possible—and to “toughen” the inspection regime later if and when the experience of inspection demonstrates that it is necessary to do so.
Why
was the return of the UN Inspection Team responded to as a hostile act by America
and Britain? Not only because it would get in the way of an Ameranglian war,
but because of the danger that Blix would conduct it honestly and report that
the hysterical Ameranglian scaremongering of recent months was groundless.
The game is no longer the disarmament of Iraq. If further proof were needed that this is so, one has only to read the draft resolution which the British and US governments are seeking support for in the Security Council at the time of writing. If passed, this would give any permanent member of the Council authorisation to invade Iraq on the pretext of carrying out weapons inspections. In particular, it would authorise the US and Britain to invade.
Draft resolution
The key provisions of the draft resolution (which is available in full on the MSNBC website) are that:
(1) “any permanent member of the Security Council may request to be represented on any inspection team with the same rights and protections accorded other members of the team”
(2) “teams shall be accompanied at their bases by sufficient UN security forces to protect them”
(3) “[teams] shall have the right to declare for the purpose of this resolution no-fly/no-drive zones, exclusion zones, and/or ground and air transit corridors, (which shall be enforced by UN security forces or by member states)”
( 4) “[teams] shall have the free and unrestricted use and landing of fixed and rotary winged aircraft, including unmanned reconnaissance vehicles”
Iraq is required:
(1) to produce, within 30 days of the approval of the resolution, a full inventory of its weapons programmes and current stocks
(2) to provide UNMOVIC [United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission] and IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] with “immediate, unconditional, and unrestricted access to any and all areas, facilities, buildings, equipment, records, and means of transport which they wish to inspect”, plus “immediate, unimpeded, unrestricted and private access to all officials and other persons” whom they wish to interview (and who can be removed from Iraq along with their families for this purpose).
Iraq is required to state its acceptance of the terms of the resolution within 7 days of its approval by the Council. If Iraq refuses to accept these terms, or subsequently fails to co-operate to the fullest degree, the consequences are drastic…
“ false statements or omissions in the declaration submitted by Iraq to the Council and the failure by Iraq at any time to comply and cooperate fully in accordance with the provisions laid out in this resolution, shall constitute a further material breach of Iraq’s obligations, and that such breach authorizes member states to use all necessary means to restore international peace and security in the area.”
In other words, the US (and any other member state of the UN) would be authorised to “use all necessary means”, including military means, against Iraq immediately any omission or lack of co-operation is reported to the Security Council, without any further authorisation by the Council.
An unacceptable offer
Clearly, the name of the game is to make Iraq an offer it cannot accept – and then have an immediate pretext for making war on Iraq. At the time of writing, France and Russia have not agreed to support this resolution even in a modified form, or to refrain from vetoing it. But the likelihood is that the US and Britain will eventually get their way, and a resolution will be passed, which demands inspection conditions that are tantamount to invasion—and that Iraq will understandably refuse to surrender before a shot is fired. There will then be an immediate pretext for Blair and Bush to make war on Iraq with the approval of the Security Council—which is what they wanted to do in the first place.
The draft resolution does not mention regime change in Iraq. Nominally, therefore, Security Council approval for war would extend only as far as stripping Iraq of its non-conventional weapons, and the means of delivering them, in accordance with Security Council resolutions. But it would be foolish to bet on the survival of the present regime once US forces are on the ground in Iraq.
Regime
change in Iraq is the official policy of the US inherited from Clinton (who
in 1998 signed into law the Iraq Liberation Act which commits the US “to
support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in
Iraq”). But of late, Bush has toned down his rhetoric about regime change,
and concentrated on the threat allegedly posed by Iraq’s non-conventional
weapons. This is obviously a deliberate ploy to increase the chances of Security
Council authorisation for war with the stated objective of disarming Iraq, but
with the unspoken intention of overthrowing the present regime in the process.
(On the day the proposed Ameranglian resolution was leaked, it was compared
on BBC television with the Rambouillet proposal to Yugoslavia a couple of years
ago, in that, if it was accepted, it would lead to an unresisted occupation
of the state, and if rejected would be held to justify an invasion. This was
in fact the first time the BBC presented Rambouillet in its true colours. At
the time it was presented as a fair proposal which Milosovic wantonly rejected.)
Anaesthetised
Last month, Blair anaesthetised the TUC and the Labour Party (and to large extent the House of Commons) by saying that he would work through the UN to bring about the disarmament of Iraq. If as seems likely the US and Britain get their way on the Security Council, the end result of working through the UN will be to sanction war, ostensibly to disarm Iraq but in reality to replace the present regime with a more compliant one—and to prevent Iraq being disarmed without a shot being fired by reintroducing weapons inspectors (in so far as it needs to be disarmed, which is not much if at all).
And it will be impossible for opponents of the war to argue that the US and Britain are acting outside international law by making war on Iraq, since they will be acting with the authority of the Security Council.
But what can the authority of the Security Council count for now? It has been given an ultimatum by America and Britain to authorise what they want to do do or else be put on the shelf while Ameranglia acts alone. And what can be the moral or legal value of an authority granted by “the world” in response to an ultimtum? Those who delivered the ultimatum have by virtue of that fact usurped the power of “the world”.
Will those on the Left who have made the Security Council the keepers of their conscience continue to do so after this?
Very probably they will because they are as committed as Bush and Blair to the view that the Iraqi regime is illegitimate. They view the world in Utopian terms, and their Utopianism is easily manipulated by the holders of power. But, by any realistic standards, the Iraqi regime must be held to be legitimate and competent. Iraq is a group of incompatible elements thrown together by Britain for its own purposes eighty years ago, and governed by force by the British regime and the Iraqi regimes that followed. That grouping should never have been formed into a state. The general Arab State promised by Britain when working up the Arab Revolt is what should exist. But, given that Iraq is what Britain caused to exist, it has to be said that it continues to be governed in the manner set by Britain, and that in social welfare matters it was governed by the Ba’ath Party better than Britain had governed it—until the American Ambassador gave it the green light to act against Kuwait in order to provide the excuse for making war on it.
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